If you’re NOT a non-profit, nothing is quite as difficult and nuanced as finding free meeting space in Fort Collins. A simple project I titled, “find all the meeting spaces in Fort Collins” escalated so quickly I had to hire a research assistant to help with the heavy lifting. It took her SIX hours to track all the spaces down and I’m sure we are still missing some meeting rooms in town. I’m now looking at a spreadsheet that is 76 meeting rooms long with FOURTEEN columns of criteria.

I’m starting to understand why no one has tackled this project.

We began our research with the “Mostly Only Helpful To Non-Profits” document from our local United Way. I’ll be honest, that used to be my go-to for people but it’s so infuriatingly focused on non-profits that it’s almost worthless to meetup groups, hobby groups and casual gatherings. The UNITED WAY put that together. It SHOULD be focused on non-profits.

By and large, meeting rooms in Fort Collins cost money. I get it. A small sliver of Cohere’s revenue comes from renting out space but as our rooms sat empty most of the time I had even more irritated emotions. WHY HAVE A ROOM SIT EMPTY WHEN I CAN BE OF USE TO SOME GROUPS THAT NEED IT?!

So I set out to find the Unicorns of meeting rooms. I wanted rooms that have an almost impossible set of criteria. Is it possible that Fort Collins could have meeting rooms that are free, responsive to inquiries, have good availability and few restrictions on use? I found a few and I want everyone to know about them.

It can be hard to find just the right meeting room or conference space in Fort Collins. If you add Old Town or “free” to the mix, it gets even harder. Whether you’re planning a free meetup group or need a place to host a board meeting or company retreat, Cohere has you covered. Check out our affordable and sometimes free meeting spaces in Old Town Fort Collins.

Conference Room (ConferEssence Room)

We designed this space to banish the bland and bring a little softness to the cold hard meeting rooms around town. By using a softer color and goddess-inspired accessories, you can bring your group or team into this refreshing conference room and not feel too corporate.

Stats: Seats 12 around a large table or 20 in a circle or horseshoe configuration.

Sometimes you just need to meet a client or two and wish you didn’t have to do that at the coffee shop. Our small conference room is perfect for freelancers and entrepreneurs who want to host meetings in a professional setting.

As students go back to school, schedules shift, and summer break comes to an end, The Fort Collins Coworking Alliance invites you to go back to (co)work!

The shift from summer to fall often ignites an eagerness for increased productivity and building new connections. Coworking provides an ideal opportunity to get more motivated, connected, and productive by offering a professional environment away from the distractions and comfort of home to help you get more work done.

When:

From August 28 through September 1, the Fort Collins Coworking Alliance is hosting a free week of coworking for you to try out different coworking options in Fort Collins and find the best place for you to kick start your productivity.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday will be dedicated to free coworking days at the different coworking spaces, each space open to free coworking on a different day based on its location. On Thursday and Friday, receive 25% off the first month of any membership at all participating coworking spaces when you sign up for your preferred coworking space.

As Startup Week Fort Collins nears its epic end, let’s make a plan to keep the momentum into next week and beyond. Whether you got your first taste of coworking, got your mind blown by a musician or felt a much needed boost in motivation as a freelancer, it’s important to not let this enthusiasm dwindle.

Step 1: Outreach

Reach out to everyone in that pile of business cards you collected. Mention something that they said that really resonated with you. Invite them out for a coffee or beer just to talk and get to know one another better. Ask to take a tour of their company. Mine through the Sched again and pull out company names or people you really enjoyed meeting. Follow them on twitter, like their Facebook pages and read their websites.

Step 2: Digest Your Notes

Did you take as many notes in your awesome FCSW17 notebook as I did? Now is the time to go back through all your notes. Check out the books, blogs or resources that you wrote down. Pull out action items and put them on your list to tackle next week. This post you’re reading right now was actually a footnote in my notebook. Look at me! Taking action!

Step 3: Participate OR Amplify

My key takeaway this week is a new awareness of how many people are doing AMAZING things in our community. Now is the time to participate in those activities by attending meetings or helping to push us forward as a group. If you can’t possibly take on another task, then please be an amplifier. Tell your friends and coworkers about the great progress that is being made. Awareness is the first step to Amazeness! Here are some things I learned about this week:

MONDAY

In a world where you can work from anywhere, why cowork? Hear from members of four Fort Collins coworking spaces about how being a part of a coworking community can supercharge your skills, connections and success as a solopreneur, freelancer or non-profit.
Moderator: Angel Kwiatkowski, Founder, fo(co)works (Fort Collins Coworking Alliance).
Julie Sutter (Cohere)
Aaron Todd (Cohere) Only he’ll be stuck in Canada waiting for his work visa to renew :(
Logan Hale (Articulate)
Sara Durnil (The Music District)

Enjoy FREE drop-in coworking each day of Fort Collins Startup Week courtesy of fo(co)works, the Fort Collins’ coworking alliance. If you’ve been coworking-curious, cooped up your your home office or fighting over power outlets at the coffee shop, this FREE event is for you to try out all the amazing coworking communities. To attend, simply show up at the space you would like to visit on their free day. You can cowork for a few minutes between sessions or up to the full day.
• Monday 9a-4p: Cohere at 418 South Howes Street

TUESDAY

Wish you felt smarter about starting your own startup? And had some quick start tips & tricks to get there? We’ll walk you through a business model canvas quick start… You’ll leave this session knowing just what you need to tackle, next — to create or scale your own startup!

Startup life is all about tenacity. Sometimes your plans may become obsolete as society (or technology) evolves. Sometimes the community doesn’t hold as much value in your product as they once did before. And sometimes the toll of startup life almost kills you. I’ve been there. Most (sane) people throw in the towel and quit when the going gets tough, and I’ve found that “fail fast” doesn’t always work in Fort Collins. Entrepreneurs generally aren’t sane nor do they quit easily. I’ll share how our foray into market research got us ready for a pivot and how burnout led to new business perspective.

How do you find the talent located in your own back yard? What is your true cost in sourcing your photos, video,written content, web design, logos locally? Hear from local creators and experts about the added benefits of using local firms and artists to fulfill your business marketing and strategic goals.

This talk will help entrepreneurs to better understand their own need to learn about cloud technology. Most non-technical people think of the cloud as a place to store data. But, the cloud can be used to make your rapidly-changing business processes more lean. In this talk, you will learn about aspects of cloud technology and how you can utilize it in your startup to grow more quickly without adding headcount.

Calling all Solopreneurs! This month’s Fort Collins Internet Pros meetup is a collaboration with Fort Collins Startup Week. Look forward to a 45-minute roundtable discussion with local business owners, followed by audience Q&A. Panelists will share their tips and experiences as Solopreneurs—growing their businesses from one-person shops to team-supported enterprises.

Whether you blog, design, code, sell, or anything in between, if you use WordPress then you belong here. Even if your just interested in finding out more about this powerful piece of software, please feel free to join us!

We will be discussing all things WordPress, including themes, plugins, security, blogging, and business uses. There is so much you can do with WordPress. So whether you are just getting started, have mastered the basics, or are a WordPress core developer, we have a place for you!

WEDNESDAY

Are you seeking funding for your small business but are unsure of where to begin? With all the options available for small businesses today, it’s normal to feel overwhelmed! The Larimer SBDC and Innosphere are partnering to bring together several types of funding sources and respective experts for you to ask questions and get answers.

THURSDAY

Learn how the 80/20 rule applies to your work and life as we discuss how to build a successful business without sacrificing your health and happiness, including top tips for creating healthy habits, improving productivity, and focusing your efforts on what will get results in your business without burning you out!

Crowdfunding is an ever growing trend to get early stage ideas off the ground. Colorado leaders in the crowdfunding arena let us know where it is today and where its headed. Get the inside scoop on how startups and entrepreneurs are accessing billions of dollars of usable capital through this innovative financing method.

Starting a business is hard. Starting a music-focused business can be even harder when it comes to tight budgets. Music businesses must learn to balance their affinity for helping musicians with the reality of the cost of doing business. Come by The Music District to hear from local professionals that have been able to create and sustain music related businesses over the long-term. Bring your curiosities and questions to learn about music entrepreneurship.

FRIDAY

Ariana will share the story of how she applied Lean Startup Principles to write and self-publish her first book, A Misfit Entrepreneur’s Guide to Building a Business Your Way so it was profitable within a few weeks of it’s release. She will then challenge attendees to begin re-imagining their idea with a Lean Startup lens and provide insight into how to maintain your soul while steadying yourself for success. This engaging and fun talk is relevant to anyone embarking on a creative endeavor that is entrepreneurial in nature.

The Typo That Cost $620 Million (Molly McCowan, Current Cohere Member)
What do NASA, Lockheed Martin, and the U.S. government have in common? They’ve all paid the price of a missing hyphen, misplaced comma, or rogue letter.
Hear the true stories of companies that have lost millions of dollars, trashed their reputations, and even gone out of business because of one typo.
In today’s world of instant connection, Autocorrect, and the ubiquitous screenshot, one mistake can spread around the world and take on a life of its own—with just the click of a button.
Learn why it’s worth the time and money to hire a copyeditor or proofreader to look over your company’s written content (including proposals, whitepapers, contracts, blog posts, email newsletters, and marketing collateral) before you click “send.”

So your coworking space is closing. That super sucks. You’re all entrepreneurs and self starters: problem solvers of the quickest kind. I’m hear to say to you STOP. Do not take action on a lease right now.

I’ve been working on coworking and community in Fort Collins and around the world since 2009. That’s three years before Galvanize incorporated for its first space. At the time of Galvanize’s closing, Cohere was/is on a wait list for membership. I think I’m worth listening to…at least when it comes to coworking in Fort Collins.

I was on hold with Comcast but I use this photo every time I want to indicate that I am exasperated.

Do not make decisions right now.

You’ve had a big crushing blow to your heads when it comes to office space. The great news is, you can office from literally anywhere these days. You could invite your employees into your living room and probably get in a solid day of work. A small gap in well-equipped office space is not a crisis. Spaceships won’t fall out of orbit. DO. NOT. MAKE. DECISIONS. RIGHT. NOW.

All the displaced coworkers need to take a collective deep breath and process what the fuck happened in your spaces and communities. Because you didn’t own the space, you might not understand why your space is closing. On paper, your space closed due to lack of money. In my mind, your space closed due to lack of community and an overzealous interpretation of the market research about how many people wanted to pay $26,000 to learn how to code. The fact that you didn’t know your space was closing until you got the announcement is proof that your space lacked one of the key values of coworking: transparency.

Do not sign a lease and especially don’t try to keep the Galvanize lease.

That Galvanize building will be one of THE most expensive buildings in Old Town. You don’t spend a few million on a renovation and thousand dollar desks to cut a great deal to the poor displaced members. That space has NOTHING to do with Galvanize’s success or failure. Okay, I’ll admit it was absurdly expensive but the space didn’t do much to foster community. At all. Don’t even get me started on the caste system of placing people on higher levels based on how much they could afford. Ugh.

If you love your current startup or business, you will hate being a Community Manager.

I bet you want to start your own coworking space. I bet that feels easy since you’ve been a member of one for a little while. Being a member of a space and running a space are really different. It took me TWO full time years to get Cohere off the ground. Even now, I have a small army of part time people to help me attend to all the details of our relatively small community. If you don’t want to abandon your other job, do NOT start a coworking space. Also, there is far less money in coworking than you might think.

Explore your existing coworking options first.

There are at least three shared spaces in Fort Collins that are not at capacity. Please give those a chance before trying to start your own. The Articulate, Digital Workshop Center, and Office Evolution. The fact that you were all in the same world (startup and tech) is actually a disservice to your companies. You’ll grow more when surrounded by people in different stages of growth including those people who have dialed in their businesses and are NOT in startup mode as well as the freelancers that are keeping everyone’s small businesses afloat.

Hire me so you can have ^^ this many friends in your coworking space.

You don’t have to do this alone. I will encourage and teach you how to engage your budding community before you sign a lease so we don’t have to read about your closure in 18 months. Email me right away to get my $500 one-on-one consulting package. It even includes math worksheets and realistic member growth rates! There’s also another compelling reason to email me right now but it’s a secret until January 1.

As the year comes to a close I wanted to take some time to thank you, reflect, and give you a preview of what’s coming in 2015.

Thank You.

I never say it often enough but you make Cohere possible. You choose us. You work with us. You laugh with us. You grow with us. Maybe you’ve been a member for 5 years or for 5 days. You matter. You are important.

Without you, Cohere is just an empty shell, a real estate transaction and a line item on someone’s budget. WITH you, we become a community, a pivot point for new friendships, and a platform for personal growth and change.

Let’s Reflect.

In December of 2009 we started out coworking in a donated reception area once/week. On the 5th week we ran out of chairs (14 of them) and broke the internet. In March 2010, we opened our first location in Old Town with 4 members.

In January 2012 we moved to the Howes location. Last December we had 39 members and 1 location. This December we have 75 members and 2 locations. That’s double. That’s huge. And we’re set to double again in 2015. Whether you told a friend about Cohere or posted an update on Facebook, many of our new members come from word of mouth and it makes a difference.

What’s Next.

2015 will bring Cohere to its final space frontier: Cohere Bandwidth, shared rehearsal space for musicians inside the amazing artist ecosystem that is the Downtown Artery. We’re looking forward to creative new connections between the artists of the Artery, the musicians of Bandwidth and the nerds of Cohere.

While Bandwidth may be located at the intersection of Linden and Jefferson we’re really at the crossroads of combining art, music and brains in brand new ways.

Here’s to 2015, may it bring you meaningful connections, amazing independence, kindness and love.

Love, Angel

Ps. Hat tip to Julie who’s been with us every step of the way from our first pre-community meeting to today.

It’s easy to make connections and get to know one another inside a coworking space. We take that for granted and just assume that we’ll meet someone new in the course of our day to day to-dos. A recent retreat to Seattle taught me how vital and AWESOME a planned group activity can be especially when that activity is way outside our “normal.” So when our organizer asked if we’d like to go SAILING, it seemed a little scary but we would be doing it together so surely it would be okay.

I tentatively agreed to a sailboat ride and bummed some Dramamine off a fellow coworker. Little did I know that it would be scary and exhilarating and that it would change Adam’s life forever.

By getting us a little out of our comfort zones and putting us in cramped quarters we were able to learn something (sailing) from new friends (the captain and his crew) and experience our location (Seattle) from a whole new point of view. Andy and I even did the most terrifying thing and crawled out to the front of the boat while we were experiencing maximum “reaching” aka, the boat was really at an angle to the water and we could have fallen out at any moment. But we didn’t.

In order to bring a similar experience home to the Coherians of Fort Collins, we’re going to stay up late and sort canned goods. Yep, I plan to use up as much if not more adrenaline during our Food Bank Shift at the CAN Jam on November 6th from 11pm-1am. Heck, it meets all the criteria: new location, new people to learn from and we’ll get a different point of view on where we live.

Has your coworking community done activities outside of your space? Tell us in the comments!

This is your ticket to a summer full of fun and libations at the very best local establishments. This little black book wants to be your BFF this summer–it’s filled with 2-for-1 drink specials from 28 different bars and restaurants–so that you can show yourself (and maybe a friend or two if they’re lucky) a great time without traveling far from home.

Now you might be wondering why I’m going on and on about this fancy coupon book for bar flies (c’mon Angel, we know you get giggly just looking at alcohol). Well, it’s because there’s one particular BOGO deal in the Fort Collins Passport that has nothing to do with booze, but everything to do with awesomeness.

That’s right! We’re offering a once in a lifetime (ok, once in a season) deal for Fort Collins Passport owners who want to try coworking: Join us for a month of coworking at our new Midtown location and you’ll get a month of membership entirely free!!

Remember, members get access to both our Midtown and Old Town coworking spaces, along with blazing fast WiFi, all the free coffee you can drink, access to professional offices, flex workspaces, and conference facilities, not to mention the best coworkers in the world.

You may be thinking, “OK I’ll just head over to www.fortcollinspassport.comand score myself one of these little gems before any of my friends know that I don’t have one yet.”

Unfortunately, massive demand for the Fort Collins Passport means all the books sold-out during pre-order, but don’t worry, I’ve got your back. I still have a few copies for sale but they’re going fast. Message Angel via the Cohere Facebook Page, Cohere Twitter Account, or comment on this blog post, and I’ll set one aside for you.

Calling all DIY, tinker, artisan, crafty, builder types!!!

It was recently announced that Fort Collins will host its very own Maker Faire–an event created by Make Magazine that celebrates the quickly disappearing skill of making things with our hands.

Massive, international Maker Faires happen annually in Big Cities, but there’s no reason that Fort Collins, a city rife with creativity and people who like to DIY, can’t get in on the action.

To that end, a team of intrepid volunteers is planning the first-ever NoCo Mini Maker Faire, which will take place at the Rocky Mountain Center for Innovation and Technology in Loveland on October 5th.

The Maker Faire is intended to be live a giant show-and-tell for all ages. It’s a place where people show what they are making, and share what they are learning. And more often than not, there’s a lot of interactive making and learning that happens during the Faire itself!

Interested in showing, telling, or learning at this event? The NoCo Mini Maker Faire team has issued an official Call for Makers, which will remain open until August 1, 2013 (that’s only a few weeks away!!).

The organizers are looking for three main types of Maker booths:

Show and Tell – show us what you do and tell us how to do it

Make and Take – create a demonstration where attendees can make something to take home

Show and Sell – show us what you do and sell a kit or finished product

Maker booths may be from creative individuals, hobbyist groups, school projects, commercial organizations, labs and businesses, community groups and more. Makers and Maker organizations that do not sell a product are provided with free booths.

See ideas from past Maker Faires and access the Google Doc sign up sheet here. We hope to see some of you super creative Coherians showing off your talents in October! Even if you don’t want to make anything, be sure to get out there and support your local Makers!